Drivers training?

Competition
1

Hello, there!

How do you, drive coaches, train your drivers, other than driving in the field?

Ty, happy holidays :slight_smile:

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For the off-season events (where all our drivers were not drivers previously), we used the AdvantageScope 3D field and simulator. Imported our robot’s (simplified) CAD and had them do driving exercises in the sim.

That allowed them to get many more hours of practice (even at home, we’d send them home with a USB joystick) and meant that even though our off-season bot wasn’t drivable until Wednesday night for a Saturday comp, we still had somewhat competent driving from first-year drivers.

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For us we have used offseason events to train new drivers, but we also run drills of various things with the robots and then will make decisions based on how those go. The two main deciding factors usually end up being, are they smooth in the operation of driving the bot (do they pick up the controller and not just go full speed immediately) and the other major one for us is how well they listen to the drive coach. There is also weight placed on how well they communicate but that can be learned as we continue to train for competitions.

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4

I have a couple drills that help a lot with smoothness and precision. They all require a working drivebase but not a full field.

1. Oraganizing cones:

  • Set up 9-12 Charged Up Cones across the floor
  • About half should be a different color. We had both yellow and orange cones so this was easy. You could also add tape to indicate different ones.
  • Create a pattern you’d like them to create.
  • Using only the drivebase, they need to push the cones so that they are in that pattern. This drills both problem solving and accurate driving.
  • Change the pattern and repeat.

2. Smooth pushing

  • Use an object that slides easily on the floor. I used 2018 Powercubes that slid easily on carpet although this could be any object.
  • Have them push the object from point A to point B
  • If the object ever looses contact with the bumper, they have to start over. This forces them to be extremely smooth, any jolt will cause the object to loose contact.
  • Once they complete the challenge, start adding obstacles
  • Keep adding obstacles. Rinse and repeat.

Another fun early-season drill for when you have a drivebase and a practice field but not a working robot is a cycling obstacle course.

  • Have the driver run cycles. Ex. 2024 - Drive from the source to the speaker to “shoot”
  • Start tossing things onto the field as “obstacles”, being as troublesome as possible. This is a fun way to have some other members of the team participate. We used orange things so 2024 Notes, 2019 Cargo, an orange chair, an orange rope, etc.
  • If they hit an object, they “lose”

Hope these drills help! They got our driver from 0 to competition ready in just a few hours.

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5

The other part about driver training is making sure they know the rules. Particularly knowing places like protected zones so not being called for fouls.

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I taught my drivers FRC history, the basics of strategy in the race (cycle planning, etc.), and watching quals of good drivers.

In my opinion, that was enough, but we need to emphasize the rules and get the drivers used to it being part of the game.

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Not a drive coach, but my team makes drivers first go over the game manual and take notes throughout. Then, they take a game manual test which goes over field layout, penalties, scoring, etc. Since we will use swerve drive in 99% of cases, we have a practice bot for them to use until the real competition robot is done. If a driver is new (and probably won’t be our driver at competition, but is trying it out for future years), we have them get used to driving a swerve bot and will have them drive it up and down hallways and then set up cones for them to practice maneuvering around. If it’s a driver that’s in the running for being our driver at competition, we have them do a more intensive training with a harder course laid out and also using old pieces to speed up their cycle time. Of course, we have them drive on the practice field we built throughout not only for training but also for robot testing.

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Here’s my thoughts on the topic. I find that drive team cohesion and function under pressure are incredibly important.

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9

1678 has a whole Workshop on driver training as well if that interests you.

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When I started doing FTC, we didn’t have a practice field. What I did at first was a simple slalom course. I went forwards, backwards, sideways. That simple exercise really helped me get a good control of the robot before we had a real practice field. If you have the space for it, I would set up some cones and do a slalom course with an old robot.

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We use the smaller soccer dish/cones. They can drive over these without knocking the cone over, with little damage to either the robot or cone. They take up less room and we only had 1 charged up cone anyways.

These come in other colors as well.
https://a.co/d/2b6OoHU

Cones of any kind are useful for field layout, drills with ‘slalom’, making a ‘goal’ to pass game pieces into, etc. They are easy to source from most sporting goods stores if you don’t have some already.

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